


Work

by ladysisyphus



Series: Wolves [4]
Category: Fargo (2014)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-20
Updated: 2014-06-20
Packaged: 2018-02-05 11:42:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1817272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sounds like an interpreter indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Work

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Relvetica](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Relvetica/gifts).



Again.  
  
S-H-A-B-B-O-S, Numbers signed, this time making each letter its own clear pulse of his fist. It was strange how of all the things he'd learned since meeting Wrench, the first had in many ways remained the most difficult. He continued, signing along as best he could keep up: "In big buildings especially, or with old people, even when it's Shabbos, you need to ride the elevator. So the elevator stops every floor going up, then turns right around and stops at every floor going down again, from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday."  
  
So often Wrench looked grumpy to excess, even when Numbers could tell he wasn't strictly opposed to the conversation they were having at the time. Now, though, his eyes were bright with genuine interest. He made his hand into a boxy bracket and made it rise by slow increments, then lowered it by the same, all the while looking at Numbers as though he couldn't _quite_ believe he were getting this right.  
  
"Just like that," Numbers said with a nod.  
  
Work? signed Wrench, and then he mimed pressing an elevator button.  
  
"Pressing a button is work," Numbers said. "Making electric--" He had to spell out 'electric' because he didn't know the sign, and he had to stop speaking to make sure he spelled it right. "--switches work counts as work." ,  
  
Wrench frowned over his toast and lifted his hand: W-O-R-K?  
  
Numbers echoed the spelling, then repeated the sign to show that he understood. Yes, work. Wrench made a surprised little snort, but nodded. "So, anyway, the elevator takes a long time."  
  
It wasn't even an unspoken rule -- the 'don't talk about your old life' directive was a pretty overt one in the syndicate, partly because nobody cared, and partly because the folk who _did_ care, you didn't want them knowing anything about where you'd come from. But then Numbers had sent back a plate of bacon for a plate of turkey bacon, and Wrench had asked what was wrong with it, and they'd just wound up here. "This one's fun, too: You also can't chew gum in your house and then walk outside still chewing gum."  
  
Wrench put down his knife and fork mid-slice, clattering them against the table with perhaps more force than necessary: Why? He looked almost offended, like the rabbis had just made up the most arbitrary shit they could think of in order to get his specific goat.  
  
Work, Numbers signed again. "If you have something inside, you can't take it outside. If you have something outside, you can't bring it inside."  
  
Why? asked Wrench again.  
  
W-O-R-K.  
  
Wrench pulled his napkin out from his lap and set it beside his plate, even though his steak and eggs were only half eaten. I need the library, he signed. 'Library' had been one of the earliest signs in Numbers' working vocabulary.  
  
"Why?" asked Numbers, who was fairly sure this was a dramatic bluff and that he would still have time enough to finish his meal before his lumbering partner stalked off bookward. "To read about Jews?"  
  
Wrench gave the little air-knock of affirmation.  
  
" _I_ can tell you about Jews."  
  
Wrench quirked his mouth to one side with irritation: _You_ read books about deaf people.

Well, his partner had him there. "Fair enough," said Numbers, signing 'okay, okay' and considering the subject at a reasonable close. "We'll finish up here and go tonight." No telling how much any given rural Wisconsin library would have on the specifics of _halakah_ , but far be it from him to discourage a love of learning at any age.  
  
After taking a thoughtful pause to drink more coffee, Wrench looked at him again: I don't understand what you mean by 'work'.  
  
Numbers sighed, though he pressed on fast from it, lest Wrench think the irritation was _his_ fault. "It's not 'work', it's _melekha_ \--" Well, great, now this was about to get frustrating in _three_ languages. Numbers shook his hands in front of them to clear the air of whatever he'd said or signed before, then stopped and took a breath, gathering the pieces he'd need to make this make sense. He expected Wrench to come in with something else, or to change the whole subject, but Wrench's hands were are quiet as they ever were, and though he went about the business of eating, he kept glancing back up, waiting for a reply.  
  
At last, Numbers pressed his lips together and balled his hands into fists, then flexed them again, stretching them as though, warmer, they might be more articulate than he could be alone. B-O-U-N-D-A-R-I-E-S, he spelled.  
  
Wrench made a sign Numbers didn't understand, and when Numbers frowned, Wrench did the sign again, then spelled: R-U-L-E-S?  
  
Rules, Numbers repeated, nodding as he held up his left hand and tapped the top of his palm, then the bottom: Rules about lines. He signed 'inside' on his right side and 'outside' on his left, then cut an invisible border between them with a chop of his flat hand. Though he nodded, Wrench still didn't look altogether convinced by this explanation, so Numbers pressed on: "You read the Bible?"  
  
The quizzical frown from Wrench told of how he hadn't been expecting _that_ question this morning. He held up his thumb and forefinger an inch or so apart: A little.  
  
"Well, so, in the beginning, for six days, God created," said Numbers, letting the effort of signing drag down the pace of his speech. "And then on day seven, God _stopped_ creating. So one day a week, that's what you have to _not_ do. Create. And a long time ago, that was, don't cook, don't sew, don't build, don't light a fire, don't use money. Now it has to include, don't complete an electrical circuit."  
  
He expected at least some of this to set off Wrench's earlier bullshit-detected expression, but instead Wrench was nodding like this was somehow reasonable -- a conclusion with which even Numbers couldn't say he agreed anymore, not entirely or even mostly. Sure, it'd been different when he'd been a kid, but for all that mattered to him now, his past might as well have belonged to somebody else altogether. One time, before Wrench had come along, he'd joked with the other syndicate members that he could probably have gone back home and told his family all about his current job, just to have them kick him out of the house not because he killed people, but because he sometimes did it on Shabbos. No one had laughed.  
  
After a moment's further contemplation, Wrench raised his hands from his plate: Why not hire someone to push buttons? Like in old elevators?  
  
"They do!" said Numbers, and his hands caught up with the sentiment later. "That's what you call a, uh--" He lifted his hand: S-H-A-B-B-O-S-G-O-Y.  
  
Wrench frowned and he made a sign Numbers was coming to know _real_ well: Again.  
  
S-H-A-B-B-O-S, Numbers spelled, and then after a pause he added, G-O-Y.  
  
G-O-Y like Gentile?  
  
Gentile was another one of those signs Numbers sometimes had to laugh about knowing. He wondered sometimes what would happen if he ever met another deaf person -- if they'd be able to communicate, or if he was stuck, as far as his hands were concerned, in a world of contract killings and rabbinic regulations. Gentile, he signed back with a nod. "He can work for Jews, but only because he wants to. And as long as Jews don't _ask_ him to do what they can't do."

There went Wrench's incredulous expression again, though this time it was paired with a snorted laugh: Don't ask? Is that-- His last sign was an unfamiliar scissors-cut-paper gesture, though, and when Numbers frowned to see it, Wrench repeated it and added: C-H-E-A-T-I-N-G.  
  
"No, not cheating. Well, okay, _sort_ of cheating. But approved cheating." The more times Numbers could work in a sign right after learning it, the more likely it would be to stick -- and the less likely he'd have to ask for it again. Not that there were any _rules_ against it, and he'd never seen Wrench so much as sigh about a third or fourth or even fifth repetition, but damn it all if that didn't leave him feeling like a jackass. "I wouldn't say, 'Press the twelfth floor button, please.' I might say, 'My auntie lives on the twelfth floor.' And then he'd press it."  
  
Wrench nodded, considering this as he took a bite of his toast, then signed: Shabbos goy sounds like an interpreter.  
  
Numbers couldn't keep down the smile that threatened to crack open the bottom half of his face. Yeah, he knocked in reply, exactly like that.  
  
And then he saw Wrench grin right back, even if only for an instant, until he could wrestle his cheeks under control and bring his lips together again into their more customary scowl. Numbers had started off thinking it was a damn shame the kid was so sour when he looked so cute like that, but all that it took was realizing that meant the smiles he got were his alone, and he suddenly had no more reason to complain. Funny how that worked.  
  
You can be my Shabbos goy, Numbers told Wrench. Not that he kept Shabbos, of course, nor had he in decades, but it was the thought that counted.  
  
Wrench raised an eyebrow as he looked around the Saturday morning crowd. Lazy, he signed first -- a common accusation, as the two of them went -- then added: No elevators.  
  
No money either, Numbers signed, and added, "So _you_ can pay for breakfast."  
  
Wrench shot him a glare so fierce it could have curdled milk, but he reached into his wallet and dug out a twenty, then threw it on the table with more force than was strictly necessary. Numbers burst out laughing, which just made Wrench glare harder -- which in turn made Numbers laugh harder still, until they were just two madmen at a cheap formica table, equal parts furious and hilarious, inexplicable to anyone in the world but one another.

**Author's Note:**

> As I said, verbatim, to Rel when we were chattering about this: 'Lord, having to explain the concept of a Shabbos elevator in ASL is, like, the Coen singularity.'


End file.
